Page 1 of To Sway a Demon Heart

Prologue

Two Months Prior

“Ican’t,”Tyrsaid,breaking away from me and taking a step back from where he had me pinned to the wall.

For one long, glorious moment, our lips had found each other, his tongue sweeping over mine in a feral kiss that shattered my senses.

“What?” I asked, feeling a little dazed and not fully understanding his hesitation. I was breathing heavily, the Pull begging me to close the distance between us as he created it.

For days, we had been drawn to each other, both of us resisting the force dragging us together. We had barely spoken on the journey to Mithloria, hoping to ignore what I now realized was the mating Pull. He felt it too, because he had confessed as much before he had kissed me, the blood still staining his hands from his earlier questioning of the shadow casters.

His green eyes dimmed, his words full of self-loathing. “I don’t deserve you,” he rasped, taking another step away from me until he was backed against my bed. The tiny inn in Mithloria had two rooms, but I had brought Tyr to mine to clean the blood from his hands. The interrogation of the shadow demons sent to attack our own casters at the border was brutal, and he had seemed so broken that everything in me wanted to fix him.

Tyr held up his hands now, and they shook as he gave me a pained look. “I am a monster, and you are everything bright and good and whole, Brigid. I can’t do this. You don’t want this.”

I shook my head, stunned that he would reject me. That mymatewould reject me, even though the gods themselves declared us made for each other. That he would presume to tell me what I deserved. What I wanted.

Before I could argue, he left the room, fleeing for his own as the memory of his lips against mine faded into nothing.

Chapter 1

TheCourtofShadowswas a horrible place.

I didn’t think of myself as a judgmental person, and the Goddess knew I tried to see the good in everyone and everything. But the dark stone hallways and oppressive atmosphere were so miserably bleak compared to the Court of Sun, or even Oneiros, that it was hard not to judge.

I sighed, tapping into my flame to continue my purging of the spider webs from the hallways. Tyr said it was a useless chore, but I felt that removing the evidence of Scathanna’s presence would help lift the gloom and ease the transition to a new Daemon Lord of Shadow.

A Daemon Lord that we still hadn’t discovered.

Tyr and I had been at the Court of Shadows for almost a month trying to wade through a litany of presumed heirs to the title. Scathanna had no natural heirs, and four hundred years of her rule had left her people broken and fighting for any scrap of power they could find.

“Just let them fight it out,” Tyr had suggested in frustration after our first week when no clear lord emerged. The title was usually hereditary, but without heirs the whole matter fell to who was the most powerful, and of course every demon with an ounce of power believed it to be their natural right to claim the position. “Or let Carnon and Elara appoint someone.”

“If you’re not willing to help, you can leave,” I had said acerbically, scowling at the Daemon Lord of Blood.

My relationship with Tyr was strained at best, especially after he had refused our mating bond. I knew Elara had asked me to join him on this mission in hopes that we might bridge the gap between us again, and a foolish part of me had hoped for the same. But so far nothing had come of it aside from catching Tyr giving me the occasional longing look.

I grimaced, returning to work as I imagined my king and queen walking through these halls in two days. Carnon had wanted to return to his old practice of rotating between courts for holidays, and Shadow was the traditional host of Samhain.

In demon tradition, Samhain marked the end of one year and the beginning of another, the transition from day to night, life to death, and autumn to winter. It was said to be the day the veils between worlds were at their thinnest, and most courts took the time to remember and honor those who had passed during the year, believing the dead might hear the celebration. The whole affair seemed to fit the darkness exuding from Shadow much more than any other court.

I knew that they were also coming to try to solve the problem of succession, since Tyr and I hadn’t managed it yet. I hated to disappoint my friends.

“My lady,” came a smooth, baritone voice that broke me from my thoughts and made my fire stutter. I felt the now familiar Pull deep in my gut, begging me to close the distance and go to my mate.

The mate who didn’t think I wanted him.

“Lord Tyr,” I said, trying to sound polite.

Cerridwen had suggested seducing Tyr, and Elara had tried to get me to talk to him and work out our differences. But Tyr’s rejection hurt. Deeply. I had only known such a pain when I’d lost my father, but this felt somehow more acute. More cutting. It had taken me the last two months to stitch my broken heart back together, and it felt like something vital and fragile had shattered in me.

To protect my heart, I had decided to adopt a kind but distantly polite demeanor toward him. I didn’t want us to hate each other, but I was too terrified of another rejection to pursue him anymore. Maybe we could just be colleagues again, the way we were before either of us recognized the Pull.

Unbidden, my body reacted with a physical jolt when I beheld him. He was a touch paler than his usual bronze tan, not unexpected as we had been stuck underground so long in Shadow. But his form was athletic and strong, his broad shoulders slimming to a tapered waist. His dark auburn hair was almost blood red down here, and his eyes flashed a bright green as he took me in, too.

I flushed, my cheeks burning as I snapped myself out of my trance and tried to give him a gentle, polite smile.

Colleagues would never be possible.